What's Your Computer Rig?

Just wondering what type of computer are those who process files from the 645D/Z are using?
I'm currently running an LGA775 Asus mobo with a Q6600 2.4GHz, 6GB of RAM, a GTX570 graphics card, and a Samsung 840PRO SSD as my scratch. While many things are acceptably fast now that I've upgraded from XP to Win7 64-bit and added the SSD, other tasks are painfully slow. So I'm looking to upgrade my motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card, and I'm not sure if the Z97 motherboard with an i7-4790K is plenty good, or if the performance increase with an X99 and a i7-5930K along with the DDR4 vs DDR3 memory is going to be significant enough to make it worth the extra dollars of investment.

What are you guys/gals using? And if you've upgraded, then from what to what, and what has been your experiences?

Yes, I completely agree that 6 gigs of RAM isn't enough. I'm going to get 16GB to start unless anyone knows that going with more will be a benefit. My files often exceed 1GB in Photoshop. I don't do any video editing.

Just wondering what type of computer are those who process files from the 645D/Z are using?
I'm currently running an LGA775 Asus mobo with a Q6600 2.4GHz, 6GB of RAM, a GTX570 graphics card, and a Samsung 840PRO SSD as my scratch. While many things are acceptably fast now that I've upgraded from XP to Win7 64-bit and added the SSD, other tasks are painfully slow. So I'm looking to upgrade my motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card, and I'm not sure if the Z97 motherboard with an i7-4790K is plenty good, or if the performance increase with an X99 and a i7-5930K along with the DDR4 vs DDR3 memory is going to be significant enough to make it worth the extra dollars of investment.

What are you guys/gals using? And if you've upgraded, then from what to what, and what has been your experiences?

Thanks

First thing I would do is to max out the RAM.

My custom built tower has 32GB and a RAID 10 drive system with 6-Core i7 processor and a high-end 4GB graphics card. It has been a while since I built it so I do not remember all the detailed specs. However, my rig processes K3 RAW files much faster than a MacBook Pro with i5 and even i7 processor.

Also remember that Photoshop is gradually passing on a lot of the intensive processing work to the GPU. They started with the Liquify function first. I tried it when it was introduced a few years ago. GPU was blazing fast vs. the CPU. I don't know what other capabilities have been GPU enabled in recent PS or LR software. Depending on how fast your card it is, that may be the next upgrade in addition to the RAM.

2011 iMac with some 2.93Ghz i7 in it, 8GB RAM, and mobile Radeon 5770 I think. Woefully underpowered for the 645Z, but it was nice back in the day for 5Dmk2 files when 21mp was a lot. I have an NEC PA272W hooked up to it as the primary display.

Now I'm thinking of building a kickass PC once Windows 10 hits, probably in ITX form factor using the NCASE M1 and ASRock X99 board as the base, but Phanteks just came out with the Evolv ATX, so I'm not as sure anymore if I want to go small or mid-size.

Originally posted by stingx

Synology San

I sure do hope you meant NAS? Having your own personal SAN would be awesome, even if horribly expensive and overkill.

Planning on getting a NAS myself, along with the new system, as it seems to be the only practical way to expand storage beyond 4TB.

I dont know that camera but I do know computers so thought I would toss my hat in.
DONT waste money on intels extreme cpus. your throwing money away for no reason.
look at the 4790k or hold out for Skylake that should be here in a couples of months. I would wait in either case because it will drop the price of the current socket motherboards saving money. Will also effect ram pricing, as it already has. Ram prices have steadily dropped a couple bucks a week, but has not come even close to the DRR3 pricing of 2 yrs ago with 16gb being $65 compared to todays $95.

Speaking of ram, when it comes to photoshop and rendering it will use whatever you offer. It will simply gobble it up. So if you do it all then get a lot. Personally I find 16gb is more then sufficient for the normal user. 32gb is pretty extensive even for the professional.

Hope this helps. Its not written in stone and is mostly opinion but its based off of hard numbers.

Also ignore AMD for the most part. AMD is struggling to keep up and they arnt pricing like they use to in an attempt to compete that way. You get more performance for the same money with intel when compared to AMD. Talking CPUs not graphic cards.

Yeah, I had read somewhere that Skylake is just around the corner. The extra $30 for DDR4 ($95) vs DDR3 ($65) does not matter much to me. It's the cost of the X99 MoBo+CPU which can be around $800 - $1,000 alone vs going with an Z97 board and chip for around $500. Either system will blow the doors off (or should) my LGA775 system.

For those who don't know, the Pentax 645D that I use produces files that are between 225-250MB when opened. So, after stitching a few frames and then copying those in separate layers in Photoshop, things get huge fast.

Benchmarks for Photoshop are often synthetic and not using real-world files. Most show no advantage of using more RAM, but then again, what's the size of the file that they're coming to this conclusion. Obviously if comparing the speed of 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB of RAM on a 40MB file should show no speed improvement, but using a 6GB file should show something - or at least I'd like to think so.

Yeah, I had read somewhere that Skylake is just around the corner. The extra $30 for DDR4 ($95) vs DDR3 ($65) does not matter much to me. It's the cost of the X99 MoBo+CPU which can be around $800 - $1,000 alone vs going with an Z97 board and chip for around $500. Either system will blow the doors off (or should) my LGA775 system.

For those who don't know, the Pentax 645D that I use produces files that are between 225-250MB when opened. So, after stitching a few frames and then copying those in separate layers in Photoshop, things get huge fast.

Benchmarks for Photoshop are often synthetic and not using real-world files. Most show no advantage of using more RAM, but then again, what's the size of the file that they're coming to this conclusion. Obviously if comparing the speed of 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB of RAM on a 40MB file should show no speed improvement, but using a 6GB file should show something - or at least I'd like to think so.